Issue of illegal immigration intensifies in Albertville, Alabama

Longtime Albertville resident Judy Beekley blames the poultry plants for the immigration debate in Albertville. When Beekley and her husband moved to Albertville 20 years ago, she saw it as a clean and prosperous place where she never needed to lock her doors. Now she owns three guns.

ALBERTVILLE -- Two groups gathered one recent evening in the gym of Albertville's recreation center. But they were not together.

Hispanic residents sat mostly in the bleachers.

In front of them, on folding chairs on the gym floor closest to the mayor and city council members, sat nonHispanic white residents, many of whom have witnessed dramatic change in this Sand Mountain community.

Above them all hung an American flag.

City leaders called the town hall meeting after the council booted taco vendors and other mobile food units off Albertville's main thoroughfare, a move defended as aesthetic and assailed as discriminatory. The publisher of the local newspaper moderated the meeting, and managed to quickly quell the few angry exchanges that reared up.

But as the meeting ended, Sand Mountain Reporter publisher Ben Shurett posed a question of his own: "How are we all going to live together here?"

Albertville, where one in four of the city's 24,136 residents is Hispanic, is the epicenter of the illegal immigration debate in Alabama, and represents a shift in the debate nationwide. While large magnet cities such as Miami and Los Angeles have seen a leveling off of immigrants in recent years, Southeastern communities a fraction of their size experienced transformative population shifts that began in the early 1990s.

Here, in this northern Alabama city flanked by poultry plants, Hispanic student enrollment at the public school's kindergarten is 27 students short of topping white student enrollment. City Hall and El Sol King Pollo restaurant share a block on Main Street. Tensions between the old and the new are high, as a recently seated mayor vows to fight illegal immigration.

Blaming poultry plants
Judy Beekley blames the poultry plants, major employers in Marshall County. The often-repeated tale around town -- no one knows if it's true -- is that one company planted a sign at the U.S.-Mexico border: "Need a job? Come to Boaz," a city that neighbors Albertville. [On video: Beekley on how life in Albertville has changed]

In the county, seven poultry processing companies employ about 7,590 people, according to the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations. A majority of those workers, local economic development officials have said, are Hispanic.

When Beekley and her husband moved to Albertville 20 years ago, she saw it as a clean and prosperous place where she never needed to lock her doors. Now she owns three guns.

The 65-year-old avoids Alabama Highway 205 because an illegal immigrant with no license crashed into her friend's car there. She bemoans the hand-written signs, thrift stores and used car lots that now dot U.S. 431, the city's main artery and front door.

"They really have taken over," she said. "We're becoming a dang sanctuary city."

A 2007 estimate by the Albertville Chamber of Commerce describes the city's population as 71 percent white and 25 percent Hispanic. In Albertville City Schools, Hispanic students make up 30 percent of the enrollment, and most of them are not fluent in English, the superintendent said.

Most immigrants in Albertville are from Guatemala and Mexico, according to Sepulveda, who meets some of them through her job as a legal assistant. Many of the Guatemalans speak only indigenous languages and have little or no schooling, she said.

Local battlegrounds
Albertville and communities like it nationwide represent the newest battlegrounds in the national debate over illegal immigration. Local leaders, concerned that the federal government is failing at its job, are taking up the issue, said Audrey Singer, a senior fellow for the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. [You can read more from Singer: 21st Century U.S. immigration includes Alabama]

"Immigration policy has moved from this national level, where there's been a stalemate, to local municipalities," she said. "The debates are now taking place on the ground in local areas."

In Albertville, Mayor Lindsey Lyons is part of that trend. He has promised to clean up the community, attract new business and curb illegal immigration. [The mayor's nine-point plan]

On his agenda: requesting training for local police officers to enforce immigration laws, requiring English translations on all signs, and seeking a local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. He also says a new federal immigration detention center is needed to serve northern Alabama. [On video: Mayor Lyons vows to fight illegal immigration]

"We welcome the legal immigrants who come here from anywhere in the world -- the legal immigrants," Lyons said recently in an interview in his office. "But if you are illegal, I'm sorry, but you're breaking the law by coming here."

Tamika Moore/Birmingham News

Benny Womack, Albertville police chief.

Lyons cites crime as a top concern. Organized crime in the form of drug trafficking, human trafficking and brothels showed up about seven or eight years ago, Albertville Police Chief Benny Womack said. Only a small group of people in the community are involved in it, said Womack, who noted that they are not all illegal immigrants. [Read more in a Q&A with Womack and other Albertville leaders]

The police chief said he first encountered human trafficking one cold winter night about eight years ago, when he found 18 people huddled in the back of a moving truck at a trailer park. They had been fed nothing but oranges on the trip from Mexico, the chief said, and when he found them they were almost frozen to death.

"We're not able to discover it very often, but it's happening all the time," he said.

Most methamphetamine in Marshall County's Sand Mountain -- sometimes called Meth Mountain -- comes across the Mexican border now, he said. Police have broken up five brothels in Albertville since 2006, including twice at the Kilpatrick trailer park.

In Kilpatrick, about 50 trailers are lined up like barracks on a single gravel lane. The prostitutes operated out of a trailer in the very back near the trash bins, said Lyons, who wore a "U.S. Border Patrol" hat on a recent tour.

Lyons has given federal officials tours of some of the city's most dilapidated trailer parks, including Shady Oaks, where police recently drove through and found someone skinning a goat. A playground donated by a local church is painted with graffiti. Residents keep chickens, hiding them in the woods when authorities come by, the chief said.

Describing some of the trailer parks, Albertville resident Linda Powell said: "It's like someone opened a page in National Geographic."

Having unsafe drivers on the roads is another concern for Womack, whose department frequently sets up traffic safety checkpoints around town to check for licenses and insurance.

Although Womack denies it, Sepulveda believes police target Hispanics with roadblocks set up in Hispanic parts of town. She worries that if police officers receive federal training to enforce immigration laws, they will use the checkpoints to screen for immigration documents and target Hispanics more than she says they already do.

About 90 percent of the 2,574 people cited in Albertville for driving without a license since 2007 were Hispanic, according to city records. More than 70 percent of the vehicles seized and impounded in the city as a result of roadblocks were taken from drivers with Latino surnames, a Southern Poverty Law Center report said.

About a month ago, police stopped Sepulveda, 29, at a roadblock with her husband and children in the car. They followed her home after she showed her license and proof of insurance, accused her of turning around at the roadblock and demanded to see the paperwork again, she said.

"In Albertville, this kind of stuff happens all the time," Sepulveda said.

Hispanic action
To get Hispanics more involved in community issues, Sepulveda formed a group called La Voz de la Comunidad, the Voice of the Community, which is getting help from the Birmingham-based Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama. Her group will hold a cleanup day and literacy drive soon, but it also promises to be politically active.

Sepulveda sees the mayor's proposal to require English on every sign as "sugar-coated prejudice," even though Lyons defends it as a safety measure to ensure first responders can locate emergencies. In response, her group called for an ordinance mandating all signs be in both Spanish and English.

The mayor in turn asked the City Council to make English the city's official language, a measure the council is expected to vote on Monday, May 18, 2009.

"I believe it's time for America and Albertville to come up with policies to ensure that America stays American," Lyons said. "The time has come for all of us to make a stand against the ways of illegal immigration."

Javier Ibarra, a 34-year-old Texan who moved to Albertville 14 years ago, said many illegal immigrants buy homes, pay taxes and contribute to schools.

"There are a lot of illegal immigrants who have given a lot to the community, but they don't see that," said Ibarra, a member of La Voz de la Comunidad.

Albertville's sales tax collections grew every month except two from January 2004 to March 2008, according to the Albertville Chamber of Commerce. The group doesn't track the number of Hispanic-owned businesses in Albertville.

Tamika Moore/Birmingham News

Jose Contreras, owner of El Sol King Pollo on Main Street, says that Albertville may be a pleasant community, but "you get tired of ignorance."

But Jose Contreras, who owns El Sol King Pollo, noted that when he opened his first business in Albertville 12 years ago, the storefronts next to his were mostly empty and there were only three Latino businesses in town. Today, his two businesses are surrounded by six Hispanic-owned shops.

Contreras called Albertville a nice and quiet community, but said the tension is real. When his son, who was raised in the city, graduates from high school, Contreras said, it may be time to move on.

"You get tired of ignorance," he said.

Ibarra, with La Voz de la Comunidad, said he hopes to help ease the tensions between Albertville's Hispanic and non-Hispanic communities. And at the recent town hall meeting, some dialogue had begun.

"Work with the Hispanic community and you will get help," said Anita Stancil, who pointed out that a brothel was closed because of a Hispanic tipster.

"Well, work with us," Mayor Lyons replied. "The fact of the matter is you've got to reach out to us, too."

Later today, a live chat, welcoming reader discussion, with reporter Erin Stock, and some of the participants in this report, at 1 p.m. CDT. Return here to "Must See Stories" to participate as we discuss: "How are we all going to live together here?"